Content and Ads in Sports Illustrated and GameInformer

The two magazine I’ve examined are Sports Illustrated and GameInformer. Both magazine feature a plethora of ads from new television show to car brands as many magazines do. However, Sports Illustrated featured ads for sports related products such as Under Armor clothing and Adidas shoes while GameInformer featured ads that related to the world of video games and technology as well as other products associated with the demographic. GameInformer had ads for new video games, desktop computers/laptops and superhero TV shows unlike in the Sports Illustrated magazine.

The stories in SI focused on sports of course from the MLB playoffs about to start to the new NFL season while GameInformer focused on a highly-anticipated video game coming out next month, “Middle Earth: Shadow of War”. Both featured pictures in their editorials but SI has real pictures taken from the field while GameInformer featured photos taken from the gameplay of a video game along with a few real-life photos of developers working on their next product. Both featured multiple professionally written articles that covered their respective areas well.

The advertisers for each magazine clearly showed a focus on placing ads that related to the content of the magazine and would thus relate to the reader more. According to what I read it seems that ads adjust to these magazines rather than the other way around. It certainly seems to me that a balance between ads and content is quite possible especially after reading Sports Illustrated and GameInformer as both featured meaningful content along with ads that related to that content without being too involved with what I was reading.